A Gendered Critique of the Two-Turnover Test as a Measure of Democratic Consolidation

The two-turnover test has been argued to be the simplest yet most demanding threshold for a democracy to be considered consolidated. Since its conception by Huntington in the early 1990s, the test's use has been both frequently referenced and debated by democracy scholars. However, despite the two-turnover test's prominence in the mainstream debates on democratic consolidation, and the recognition of both contestation and inclusion as core dimensions of democracy, applications of the two-turnover test have rarely considered women's political rights or inclusion. This raises the question of whether the two-turnover test is an appropriate measure of democratic consolidation. This paper critiques the two-turnover test as a method of assessing democratic consolidation from a gendered lens. It argues that by overlooking women's voting rights and participation as political candidates, the two-turnover test risks capturing electoral competition only among men, decided by men. I contend that if the two-turnover test claims to measure the consolidation of democracy, then both democracy's contestation and inclusion dimensions, including those related to women, should be incorporated into the test. Using the United Kingdom and the United States as illustrative examples, this study demonstrates that when we take into account equal suffrage and the transfer of power from a male incumbent to a woman, even countries considered “model” democracies such as the UK and the US either passed the test only in recent decades or have not yet done so. This applies to turnovers in both the executive and legislative branches. I then reflect on the gendered nature of candidate selection mechanisms to consider whether, even with the inclusion of women's political rights, the two-turnover test is a sufficient measure of democratic consolidation. This study contributes to the conceptual debates on democratic consolidation by demonstrating the need to incorporate women's political inclusion into the analysis of democratic consolidation, rather than treating it as a potential outcome.